When I was in Nagasaki a few days ago, I did a variety of things, however one thing that I did not go into detail about was the shrines I visited. I performed what is called a jinja meguri (神社巡り). Jinja means shrine, a meguri means going around, so basically I went around to various shrines and prayed at them, but I also participated in the collection of goshuin and took several pictures of each shrine. So here are the four shrines that I visited while in Nagasaki.
1) Suwa Shrine (諏訪神社)
The first shrine that I visited was Suwa Shrine. The shrine is the main shrine of Nagasaki city and was started in 1614, so it is over 400 years old. The first thing after going up the steps to the shrine was pray and donate the standard 5円 coin. I then proceeded to get the goshuin at the window, while waiting I looked at the ema of the shrine. The shrine had a lot of neat quirky things sort of hidden behind the shrine. There was an inari shrine (shrines with a lot of red torii arches and usually have small kitsune statues (foxes)) in the back, but the things that were cool were all of the komainu (lion-dog statues common at shrines. There were a large variety of them, especially unique ones with fun traditions and superstitions. One pair of komainu are called stop dogs where you tie a small string around it if you want to stop a bad habit such as smoking, another one gives you good luck if you put your hand in its mouth, and yet another one (pictured) has water coming out of its mouth and if pregnant women drink this water it brings good luck, it also doubles your money if you wash your money in it.
2) Matsunomori Tenmangu (松森天満宮)
The second shrine I visited wasn’t even on my original plans before I came, but we were killing time and it was just a small walk down the street from Suwa Shrine, so we thought why not. The first thing we noticed about the shrine were a few cats that were playing outside of the shrine,but the second thing we noticed were all of the chickens (at least 10), there were a few standard hens/roosters, but there were quite a few silkies, one of my favorite breeds of chickens. Silkies have fur-like feathers, an extra toe on each foot, and blue skin flaps, which make make them super cool. The third thing I noticed was an old bomb shell on display outside from the 1904 Russo-Japanese war. The shrine booth was closed, but there was a sign telling you to go the house if you were visiting during hours, so I went to the house and rang the doorbell so that I could get the red seal (I believe the guy who gave it to me was wearing a Bart Simpson t-shirt rather than the traditional Shinto priest garb, but I can’t complain because I came into their house, but regardless I got my seal and was on my way.
3) Nagasaki Gokoku Shrine (長崎県護国神社)
On the second day of my trip, I visited the Nagasaki Prefecture’s Gokoku shrine. Gokoku shrines honor people who died in wars. I recently decided that I want to get the red seal from every prefecture’s gokoku shrine, so this was the first one (I’ve visited Fukuoka’s, but haven’t gotten the red seal yet). The shrine was very beautiful, but also very simple, there weren’t quirky things or too many statues, basically just a decently sized shrine building, two guardian komainu, and one big torii arch leading up to it. I prayed at the shrine and then went into the side office to collect the red seal of the shrine and then I continued on my way to the nearby Nagasaki peace park.
4) Sanno Shrine (山王神社）
The fourth and final shrine of my Nagasaki trip was the Sanno shrine. I had visited the entrance of this shrine on my visit to Nagasaki back in 2009. The reason that I visited before was because the shrine has a famous torii arch. In 1945 when the atomic bomb hit Nagasaki, it blew down half of the torii arch, and so it became a symbol of hope in the wake of the tragedy. I visited very briefly on the walk to the peace park back in 2009, so I never walked the extra 30 meters to get to the shrine itself around the corner. The shrine was fairly nice as well, it had two huge (8 meter in diameter) camphor trees, these trees were initially killed after the bomb’s blast, but sprung back to life and became yet another symbol of hope in this tragedy. The shrine has many strands of paper cranes hanging near one of the trees as well as jars of paper cranes under the komainu and one jar sitting next to the half-torii arch outside of the shrine itself. I was lucky and caught someone in the shrine’s booth and was able to get the red seal (I had read online that there wasn’t always someone there).